


Three Times A Charm

by Naeshira



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-07-23 19:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16165808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naeshira/pseuds/Naeshira
Summary: Detective Shane Madej is new to the LA precinct, an he's itching to get started on a case. Then a body turns up by the highway and it's up to him and his partner Detective Andrew Ilnyckyj to solve the case. Of course, Detectives Bergara and Lim get involved, and then it's not long before an older, more sinister case is brought to light.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> A warning for: Description of dead bodies and some light violence. Blood, stab wounds, etc. Not excessive, I tried to keep the descriptions to a paragraph or two, but they're there.  
> Also a warning for bad use of 1920s slang. I tried.

The precinct was buzzing with activity. Shane twirled his pen around his fingers and stared blankly at the paperwork in front of him. It was a Thursday afternoon, and he’d only started this job on Monday. Four days was not quite enough time to do anything interesting. His little desk in the corner was quiet amongst the clamoring voices and phones ringing from the other desks in the bullpen. 

At the desk beside him, Detective Andrew Ilnyckyj was signing off on a case file, having pulled it from the department archives to research for a cold case. Behind them was a corkboard, mostly dominated by a large street map of Los Angeles, though Ilnyckyj’s half of the board had accrued notes and scribbles from his cases over the years. Shane’s half of the board was still boring and empty. 

Shane had liked Ilnyckyj, who’d introduced himself as “call me Andrew.” He was a short, quiet man with a wry sense of humor. He wasn’t the easiest man to talk to, but Shane couldn’t help but feel satisfied whenever his awful puns got the man to crack a smile. They were detective partners now, and Shane was itching to shadow the senior detective and learn what West Coast Justice was all about.

A commotion near the hallway brought him out of staring at his desk. 

“Another one down! The Third Street Thief has been brought to justice! Bergara and Lim bringin’ home the bacon!”

Detective Ryan Bergara wove his way through the bullpen to his own desk, situated across the little aisle from Shane. He tossed his jacket on the back of his chair and stretched his arms out with a sigh before dropping into it himself. 

“You finally got him, huh?” Shane tapped his pen a couple of times before tossing it onto the desk in defeat. He wasn’t going to be getting this paperwork done anyway. 

“Took us long enough. Bastard was hiding out at his sisters’ place the whole time.” Bergara ran his hands over his face. “We didn’t even know he had a sister!”

“She was his step-sister; there was a mistake in the file.” Detective Steven Lim had trailed after Bergara’s big entrance more sedately, still hunched in his jacket as he sat down at his own desk across from Andrew. “We had to go back through their Oklahoma records to find her name.” 

“Good job, guys.” Andrew nodded. “Dinner tonight to celebrate?”

Shane perked up at that. “Dinner to celebrate? Is that a regular thing we do here?”

Bergara nodded enthusiastically. "Absolutely! On big cases. You haven’t had one yet, Madej. But don’t worry, I’m sure a breakthrough will come out of those cold case files soon!”

Shane made a face at him. “Give me a day, Bergara, I’ll solve a bigger case than you will.”

Bergara rolled his eyes. “I’ll buy out the joint for you when that happens.” 

“Before you go out, we’ve got a new case.” 

Shane jumped slightly as Lieutenant Adam Bianchi appeared at Lim’s desk. He was quiet as a mouse and observant as hell, and Shane had yet to see him crack a smile. 

“Is it for us?” Lim reached for the file that Lieutenant Bianchi was holding, but Bianchi lifted it out of the way. Lim pouted. 

Bianchi pointed at him and Bergara, “You two have paperwork for this Third Street Thief to finish. This one goes to them.” He jerked his thumb at Andrew and Shane. Andrew took the manila folder, shoving the cold case closed and almost off the desk in his enthusiasm. 

Shane wheeled his chair closer.

“Good luck on your first job, Madej.” Bianchi gave a wave and walked back towards his own desk across the room. 

“We’ve got a stiff.” Andrew passed the file over. “Down near San Pedro Port. Forensics will beat us there, so let’s get moving before they pull the body in for autopsy.” 

Shane juggled the file in his hands as he stood and grabbed his hat and jacket. “On your six, buddy.” 

Behind them Lim called out a chipper “Good luck!” and Andrew waved back over his shoulder. 

~~~

Shane couldn’t navigate LA roads yet, so Andrew begrudgingly drove to the crime scene. Police cars blocked the street from any curious pedestrians, so they parked on the side of the road and walked closer to the area. A quick flash of badges and they ducked through the police line, finding themselves beside the big patrol wagon that forensics used to transport bodies. 

“Hey, Zach.” Andrew waved over one of the men in coveralls. “What have we got?”

The man who greeted them was short and thin, with large glasses perched on his face. “Heya Andrew. Asian male, approximately late thirties. Significant head trauma and what looks like multiple stab wounds. Pretty gross.” He glanced at Shane, an obvious question in his eyes.

Andrew introduced them both, and Dr. Zach Kornfeld gave him a proper handshake.

“I started this job in Chicago,” Shane assured Dr. Kornfeld as he led them to the body, “I know my onions, and I can handle a dead body alright.” 

“If you say so, pal.” With a flourish, Dr. Kornfeld swept his arms out to a ditch beside the road. “Here’s our John Doe.”

The body was lying face-up in the dirt, limbs all askew. He had been wearing a button-up shirt, which was pulled open to expose a bloody undershirt. The man’s jacket was tangled down around his elbows, and his hat was lying a few feet away in the dirt. Shane glanced down the body and saw nice pants and shoes that looked recently shined. He took a breath and looked towards the face. Brown eyes were wide and unfocused, and the head was tilted in such a way that the jaw was slack and open. Black hair was dark and matted with blood on one side, confirming the head trauma. 

“You need a butt?” Andrew gently elbowed him in the side, holding up a worn pack of cigarettes.

Shane waved him off. “It’s just… been a little while.” He had to tear his gaze from the body to meet Andrew’s eyes. They were closer to the ocean here, and the overwhelming smell of salt cleared his head. The ocean was loud here too, with ships and tankers berthing at the dock, and so Shane could ignore the other three forensics men starting to poke and prod at the body and the dirt around the hat. 

Andrew pulled out a match and lit a cigarette of his own. “Go talk to the witness. I’ll get the preliminary report.” 

Shane clapped Andrew on the shoulder before moving away. The perimeter of the crime scene was dotted with a handful of curious onlookers, mostly dock workers, but Shane focused on the woman standing close to a couple uniformed officers. She looked like a cancelled stamp; young, clutching her bag tightly in her hands, and with the nervous face of someone not used to talking to police. Shane took note of her outfit; a tight skirt that reached mid-calf and a jacket that was clearly worn around the elbows and cuffs. She was up on the latest styles, her hair was styled in a short bob, and she wore what looked like a brand-new cloche hat. She’d run into a little money somewhere recently then. 

“Detective Shane Madej.” He announced himself.

The witness was in town visiting a friend, having gone for a brisk walk after lunch. No, she didn’t recognize the victim. No, she hadn’t seen anyone else around the crime scene. She’d run all the way back to main road to find a telephone to report it and led the police out to the body herself. No it couldn’t have been more than an hour since she’d first seen him. She’d already missed one appointment this afternoon, could she please go, sir? Shane finished taking his notes and then sent a policeman to wave down a taxi on the main road and called the witness a dead end.

By the time Shane shut the old door of the taxi for the woman, Andrew had finished with the routine examination of the body and the forensics guys were moving it to their police wagon.

“Nothing in his pockets?” Shane asked.

Andrew shook his head. “No money and no identification. Just this.” He held up a piece of paper. Something had been written but it was just smudged enough that Shane couldn’t read it in a single glance.

“Directions?” he guessed. 

“Forensics wanted to insist on taking everything, but I managed to get a hold of it before they could.” Andrew jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the forensics team, one of whom had just shoved the other good-naturedly into the side of the wagon before climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Sounds good.” Shane nodded. He pocketed his notebook. “Witness was useless, she only found the body maybe an hour ago while out on a brisk walk.”

“Who goes on a walk in the middle of the afternoon? In LA?” Andrew shook his head. “Anyway, Eugene said the body had been there for at least two hours.”

Andrew led the way back to their car, wrenching open the driver’s side door and pausing to look at Shane over the top of the vehicle. “I’ll go ask the businesses on the main road, see if anyone saw the man. You ask the workers at San Pedro Port, see if anyone was missing a shift.” 

Shane nodded. In spite of there being a dead man, Shane couldn’t help but feel a little bit excited to be back at work. No more cold cases, he finally had something to do.


	2. Chapter Two

Captain Daysha Edewi had a large office just in sight of the station bullpen. She was a young black woman in charge of the whole station, and Shane had honestly been surprised upon meeting her. California certainly was more progressive than the Midwest, he was finding. But Captain Edewi had a take-no-shit attitude and she was good at her job. She’d earned the respect of Lieutenant Bianchi and the other ranking officers, had even put one of her own men in the can before, and Shane knew better than to question why she was the big cheese. 

Though that did nothing to stop his worry when was called into her office two mornings after the body had been discovered. Upon entering the room he was immediately outnumbered. Two more desks were on either side of the frosted glass door, and a young woman sat at each one. The blonde on his right was named Maycie, he’d learned. The short-haired woman on the left was Jen, and he’d seen her come collect Detective Lim for lunch when he wasn’t busy. One was Captain Edewi’s secretary, and the other was a judicial liaison, but Shane couldn’t remember who was which. They both looked up at him when he entered and greeted him good morning before returning to their individual typewriters.

Shane tipped his hat to them both before moving around a stack of filing cabinets to one of the small chairs that sat before Captain Edewi’s desk. The ladies’ typewriter clacking was a soothing sound as Shane waited for the captain to acknowledge him.

“Detective!” Captain Edewi set aside her papers and looked up at him with a smile. “I wanted to know how you were settling into your first case?”

Shane blinked. He’d expected to be in trouble for something, honestly. Some error in paperwork or a mishandling of witnesses. Not that he’d done anything to be in trouble for yet. He didn’t feel like he’d done anything at all. “I – yeah! I’m alright! I’m doing swell.”

“Good, good.” Captain Edewi set her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers together, looking at Shane with a critical eye. “Listen, Madej, I want you to do something for me.” 

Shane paused a moment, before giving a slow “Alright.” 

Captain Edewi rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Madej, everything’s Jake. Nothing illegal, I promise. Lord knows I’ve had enough trouble with corrupt detectives in this building. No, I need you to give me updates on this case of yours.”

Shane relaxed into the chair. “Sure thing, I could help you out there,” he said. He’d heard about the corruption in the LA police department, everyone had. Chicago was no shining city on the hill, but LA had the bag when it came to bad coppers. 

“Ilnyckyj’s old hat at this, doesn’t think he has to tell anyone anything. But then I don’t know what my detectives are doing until their paperwork comes in, and that’s not acceptable here. Understand?” 

“Absolutely, Captain.”

“Great. You can just drop the reports off to Maycie. I don’t need a daily update, I’m not your mother. Just keep me abreast of the situation. And tell Bergara to keep his shirt on, will you?” 

Captain Edewi leaned back in her chair and picked up a pen, dismissing Shane before he could ask what that meant. 

~~~

It was another week before the next body washed up. Bergara and Lim took that one, half-heartedly fighting over the keys to their patrol wagon. The murder of John Doe by the docks remained an open file on Shane’s desk.

Shane had drunk enough cups of coffee to make him feel sick, and beside him Andrew looked half-asleep at his desk. He’d interviewed nearby shop owners while Shane had poured over missing persons reports to find anyone matching the description. They had both had analyzed the scrawled up piece of paper and found it to have been directions, as Shane thought. Directions that had led the dead man straight to the sight of his murder. The watermark on the paper had matched a nice hotel near the docks, but that had led nowhere really. Neither the clerk at the front desk nor the elevator man had recognized the sketch of the dead man’s face, and they were stuck back at square one. 

Shane flipped his notebook around and started at the beginning again. Unidentified body, about five-and-a-half feet tall, Asian. One head wound, three stab wounds in the back. San Pedro Port, just outside the gates and alongside the road. One witness, the only witness, a young woman out for a brisk walk in the afternoon.

Shane sat up suddenly, turning to the map of LA pinned up on the board behind him. “Andrew. Do people normally walk along this stretch of road?”

“Hm?” Andrew jerked awake. He’d been nodding off, head propped on his hand. “Do people do what?”

Shane pointed to the little red pin that marked the scene of the crime. “This street ain’t exactly a promenade. Do people walk here? The witness who found the body, she said she was going for a brisk walk after lunch.”

Andrew frowned. “I thought that was strange. LA gets hot mid-afternoon, even in fall. Even if that stretch of road wasn’t down by the port, it’d be rare for anyone to go walking around.”

“That paper from the hotel could’ve been hers. She said she was in town visiting a friend.”

“You think she lured him out in the middle of nowhere to hit him over the head and fill him with daylight?”

“I think it’s plausible.”

Andrew was nodding, though little emotion showed on his face. “Takes a lot of strength to stab a man three times. She looked small.”

Shane was already standing, grabbing his hat and jacket off the stand. “Not if she knocked him out first. Surprise him with a heavy rock, stab him while he’s down. A classic dry-gulch. Even my grandmother could do that, and she’s dead.”

Andrew snorted, “It’s certainly an option.”

Shane shrugged into his jacket and dropped his notebook into his pocket. “I’ll head down to forensics, see what they say about the stab wounds. Then I’ll meet you at that hotel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look it's the Test Friends! We've got the whole squad here now.


	3. Chapter Three

The forensics department sat cold in the precinct’s basement. But the group of four men who ran it were loud and boisterous, and Shane could hear them from the stairs.

“Ned! Shut up about your wife and help me cut open this ribcage!”

“Eugene, please. Just because you’ve got beef with my American dream-”

“Oh my God, I don’t care about your white man American dream. I just wanna open this guys lungs up and confirm a cause of death.”

“Hello, Detective Madej!”

Shane glanced to the side, where Dr. Habersberger sat at a desk beside the door. He had several bullet casings spread out before him, along with a microscope and some pen and paper.

Shane tipped his hat, “Hey there, doc. I had a question about that stiff from the other day.” 

“Three stab wounds and head trauma, right?” Habersberger nodded. He turned in his chair and then walked to a file cabinet. He returned with a manila folder containing a couple photographs and a copy of the autopsy results.

Shane pushed a lamp into a better angle and looked at the photographs. The black and white image had been taken when the body had been returned to the basement lab. The head trauma looked gruesome, dark blood indistinguishable from the man’s dark hair. Shane quickly pushed past that photo to the stab wounds. There were three thin lines, standing out clearly after the blood had been washed off the body. 

Habersberger continued, “We determined a small blade, maybe a letter opener. Not necessarily fatal in its own right, but he was stabbed in the kidney, the lung, and this joint up by the shoulder. With the victim unconscious, he likely died due to blood loss.”

“Could these wounds have been done by a dame?”

“Yeah, I think? If she got the bulge on him.”

“Easily!” From the autopsy table, Dr. Ned Fulmer had waved them over. “Look at this egg for example: his stab wounds are deeper thrusts, from an angle that indicates someone taller than him. Sure, a strong woman in heels could have done this, but more likely it was a button man. Your John Doe suggests a female attacker just as strongly.”

Shane swallowed his nausea and leaned over the table to see the dead man. Sure enough, thick lacerations had gone deep into the man’s back. The body was bloated and smelled like seawater and death, so Shane only looked long enough to confirm his suspicions.

“Got a new lead on the case then, Madej?”

“God I hope so.”

~

The hotel elevator man had indeed recognized the woman from Shane’s report, though she had checked out the morning before. A cab had taken her and her luggage to the train station, and there Andrew had interrogated the ticket clerk until he admitted to selling her a ticket north towards Seattle.

They’d sent telegrams out to any train stations north, and a few out west as well in case she was truly on the lam. With any luck, it’d only be a day or so before she was caught and brought in on suspicion of murder.

In the meantime, Shane and Andrew sat back and watched Bergara and Lim tackle their own murder investigation.

Detective Bergara was very much the research and action type of copper. He looked up his facts in order to correctly shove them in his suspects’ face, and he rarely investigated a place without proper reason or suspicion to. He could just as often be found with his nose in old case files as he was out on the street tracking down a suspect with his trusty flashlight and badge.

Detective Lim, on the other hand, was more flighty and relied on gut instinct. He took every lead at face value, giving each one equal time and devotion and never letting a possible clue slide by. It wasn’t until the very end of the day that he’d line up all his ideas and decide which ones were worth perusing the next day.

It was a smooth system, and it yielded good results for them. In contrast, Shane often felt that he and Andrew were bumbling around, knocking into each other in an effort to both do the same thing. Their partnership had yet to be ironed out, but Andrew was patient with him. Shane supposed that was one benefit of having a senior detective on hand.

The body that Shane had seen in the middle of autopsy was the center of Bergara and Lim’s investigation. A man, mid-thirties and white and bearded like a sailor, pulled from the water about a half-dozen miles up the coast from the last one. He’d had a deep stab wound through the heart, cutting cleanly between the ribs and into the right atrium. The two other wounds on his back, one to each kidney, seemed like overkill. Dr. Yang had confirmed the heart wound as the initial cause of death.

Such easy precision led them to investigating mostly doctors and butchers in the greater Los Angeles area. They had few leads, but found a key witness in officer along patrol where the body was estimated to have been dropped in the ocean. There was a morgue near his patrol route, and the officer had often seen hearses and funeral processions in the area. But the night before the body had washed up, he’d slowed down to speak to the driver of a hearse who’d been parked on the side of the road. The street was built up along the coastline for a scenic drive, a perfect body dump site.

Bergara and Lim had had no luck finding the morgue worker, and a fruitless day with no further leads led to them both grumbling when they returned to the station for the night.

“No one working at the morgue fit the description Officer Evans gave us.” Bergara shook his head, slapping down his notes on the table. “They lost a set of keys a month ago, but that’s all we’ve got.”

“Working theory:” Lim pointed with his pen, leaning across his desk towards his partner, “Someone nabbed the keys, stole a hearse, and used it to cover up his crime and as an easy way to transport the body. By the time Evans got there, he’d already dumped the stiff in the ocean.”

“No hearse was missing, just the keys. Why bother returning it?” Bergara pointed back, “If you carry a body with fresh stab wounds, there’s gonna be blood on everything! A hearse doesn’t look like a crime scene, it’s supposed to be nice for a funeral.”

“Maybe he wrapped the body up in something. I suppose it’s hard to make a getaway in a hearse, people would notice.” Lim shrugged. “He probably got to the train to dust out of town.”

“Dammit, that doesn’t help us at all!”

Shane shook his head and glanced at Ilnyckyj. The two of them were still going over possibilities raised by the potential murder weapon and the hotel paper. Letter openers weren’t unique, but the hotel only carried so many, and none were missing. By the time the sun went down, the four men were tense and tired.

~  
Shane ducked his head into Captian Edewi’s office, finding her as she was putting her jacket on. “Hey there, Boss. You caught my note from this morning?”

Captain Edewi nodded, adjusting her hatpin in a small mirror she kept in her desk. “I did, Detective. I like your approach. Let me know when you find that woman, I’d like to see how you handle a suspect.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Shane tapped his hat as she passed him. Maycie and Jen were both waiting in the hallway as she locked the door. 

Jen grinned up at him. She had boldly worn men’s pants today, though they were mostly covered up by the long coat she had bundled up in. “I hear Steven is treating you boys to dinner tonight?”

“Is he?” So far as Shane knew, Lim and Bergara still hadn’t celebrated their capture of the Third Street Thief. Perhaps that was it. 

“You’ll like it, Madej. He knows a real good joint. Nibble one for me, will you?” With that, Jen had winked and followed the other two women towards the door. 

Shane shrugged, before returning to his desk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My bad guys, this one took a while to get out here. The semester ended and then the holidays were a bit overwhelming. But here we go, Chapter Three!

**Author's Note:**

> Characters not mine, of course. Props to the Unsolved Boys for making such a compelling AU to wade through tho. Gotta bring the Worth It Boys in too, of course!  
> A big thank you to lonelynayiq and headspacedeficit for the help in plotting and editing, I have cool friends.


End file.
